How Cat Destroyed Christmas
by clueingforbeggs
Summary: Cats and Christmas decorations don't go well together. Nor do cats and Christmas presents. (Story also includes Holly, but I reached the limit of four characters)


It was the night before Christmas and all throughout the ship everything was as far from calm as you could possibly imagine. Seriously. Try imagining the most hectic way a group of, say, 20 people could be behaving. Now imagine something about a million times more chaotic, but there's only 4 people. And most of that chaos is caused by only one of those people. That, roughly, is how chaotic it was.

Thanks to Kryten somehow setting up a small tree farm on E-Deck a Christmas tree stood roughly in the centre of the bunkroom. Half of it had been decorated by Kryten and Rimmer, the other half by Lister and Cat, which left the tree with a lopsided, half meticulously decorated and half lets-just-place-this-here-randomly-decorated, though in the three weeks since the tree had been put up Lister had spotted Rimmer moving some of the decorations around, muttering about how neither Lister not Cat were qualified to decorate the tree. As if he expected them to have PhD's in tree decorating. There was also a string of lights above the bunkbeds, with a grand total of 20 cards hung precariously between the lights.

That was until Cat decided he needed to sleep on top of Lister for Christmas Eve, and therefore decided to run across the bunkroom, jump up (instead of using the ladder, which had been provided for easy top-bunk access) and fling himself at Lister. And he almost made it. Almost.

Instead he ended up slamming into the side of the bunkbed and getting caught in the string of lights. For a breif moment he hung suspended with a confused look on his face, before the end of the lights slipped free of the peice of sellotape and Cat, the lights and the cards all came crashing unceremoniously down to the floor.

'AAAOOOOOOOWWW!' Thud.

From the top bunk Lister groaned slightly and rolled over. Rimmer, however, was on the bottom bunk and therefore was rudely awoken. It didn't help that he had only recently got to sleep, what with the string of lights keeping him awake. When he complained to Lister however Lister had just teased him, and called him 'A big light' which was accurate, but at the same time there was a huge difference between being a hologram and having a load of lights flickering whilst you're trying to sleep.

'For smeg's sake, can't you just behave for once!' he snapped angrily. 'I've only just got to sleep and now you're- You're- Pulling the lights down. Or whatever this is.'

From the floor the pile of lights and cards shifted slightly and Cat slightly untangled himself. 'Aw man, my hair! Is my hair okay?'

* * *

This wasn't the first time this Christmas season that Cat had ended up wearing the decorations. Somehow he had decided the best thing to do with the Christmas tree was climb up it, however when he reached the top he had grabbed the star, which came off in his hand and threw him off balance, cascading down the tree and tangling him up in a load of tree decorations and tinsel. This was witnessed by Lister, who was so engrossed in his videogame that it was more accurate to say that this had been missed by Lister, until Cat walked in front of the TV screen, tripped over the tinsel (which was still tangled in the tree, and, for the second time in as many minutes, lost his balance.

'AAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOWWWW!'

'You OK man?'

'What are you talking about, you monkey? Nothing happened' Cat mumbled through a mouthful of floor. 'Now don't help me up from this mess I am definitely not in.'

Lister sighed and paused the game just as the entire Christmas tree fell over on top of Cat, which caused him to start wailing again

'My hair! I'm going to have bits of tree in my hair!'

Lister couldn't help laughing and taking a picture of Cat. Well, a picture of the tree, you couldn't really see Cat.

* * *

As for Christmas day itself, Holly woke everyone up early, which wasn't something Cat did, but rather something he was affected by. The alarm sound blared through the whole ship, disrupting Cat's beauty sleep, so he really wasn't in a good mood. After all, he needed his beauty sleep.

When each crewmember exasperatedly asked why Holly was waking them all up at 6AM their only reply was 'It's Christmas.'

Which then started a huge argument over whether 'It's Christmas' is a valid enough reason to wake everybody up at a ridiculously early time in the morning and so nobody noticed Cat heading over to the tree, which everybody had placed their present under the previous night in an attempt to stop a repeat of the previous year where Cat had torn everyones presents open and chewed on the boxes.

Unfortunately, by the time they gave up arguing with the senile computer Cat was sitting in a pile of torn up wrapping paper whilst chewing on a vacuum cleaner box.

'What?'


End file.
